Date of this Version

2010

Comments

A photographic documentary by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
A publication of the in-depth documentary
photography at the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln’s College of Journalism
and Mass Communications.
For more information, call 402-472-3041 or
e-mail cojmc@unlnotes.unl.edu.

Abstract

In June 2008, a group from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — two advisers, seven student photographers, two student reporters and one student videographer — traveled to South Africa for 18 days. Their project, which had been in the making for the previous six months, focused on documenting immigration issues in South Africa. Howard Buffett, a documentary photographer, funded the trip, which was a partnership involving UNL, Arizona State University and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The group arrived in South Africa amidst the aftermath of xenophobic violence that tore through the country in the several weeks leading up to the trip. To understand the violent history of the country, the UNL students spent the first three days touring Johannesburg and Soweto, the Black township where some of apartheid’s watershed moments of political uprisings and hostilities took place. They also visited the Apartheid Museum. Working with their ASU and South African student partners, the students wrote stories and shot video and photographs in Johannesburg and nearby townships and at the Zimbabwean border. What these student journalists found were stories of extreme suffering like none of them had ever known or witnessed. This book offers just a glimpse of the countless heartbreaking and inspiring stories the group discovered in South Africa.